Hulwana's Nephew

 

Astonishing when one oughtn’t be astonished. Mumbling to oneself lips aflutter and all unhinged. Strange, uncanny to be living others’ lives from the past and other cultures… Hulwana coming by with a young chap in stride, nephew of that size and aspect difficult to credit right off. Thin, darkly pretty, upright, always in her marvellous Arab gear—even when like this morning she declares she was not in her “fancy clothes.” Words with Hulwana, unsighted the last number of weeks, dad unwell and losing his appetite—when from the side the young fresh-faced body-building nephew in plain red tee that set-off his colouration shoots out a low hand at table-top level. Unexpected interruption, hardly recognisable in the first instance as an offering. Extended low and flat like a chapatti on a plate in fact for a reason. When the lad bent almost double to reach the hand he had been given with his forehead, astonishment, fright and delight all in confusion. A definite touch achieved with a slight nod at the end of the bow. Gee. Ah me...Ya, unmet previously, Hulwana confirms, as the lad hailed from Malacca. Her nephew. Smiling apologetically for his limited English. One would need to travel back at least sixty years for something roughly comparable in old Montenegro. (Hulwana's nephew was early twenties.) Online Piero di Cosimo pictures last night showing grassy knolls with livestock and birds of the air carried some hint of the same range of human feeling and respect. The omnipresence of birds and animals in the old artwork across the globe—Mughal India and Egypt before the most recent study—set one thinking on the temper of the human mind over the ages in the earlier living.